One Ore for Two Sheep

How playing cutthroat board games has brought my family together

I’ve talked to a lot of people in recent weeks who are struggling with time. When today is no different than yesterday and likely to be the same tomorrow, the days have a tendency to run together. 

Fortunately, that’s not the case here at Casa Sirena. Nuvia has been working from home and maintains a schedule with slight variations from day to day. We get up around the same time, eat together, go on walks together, and so on. 

But on weekends the fun begins. Every Friday and Saturday night is game night. We introduced Annie to board games at a fairly early age and taught her, for better or worse, our cutthroat ways. How cutthroat? I can’t think of a single time I let Annie win. Call me a monster, but I’m just not wired that way. Besides, Annie would know I was letting her win, which would only make her mad. 

(I’m having flashbacks of my dad delivering hard fouls during the blood sport that is driveway basketball so maybe this is learned behavior I need to unpack some time in the future.) 

Anyway, over the years we added new games while some fell out of favor. At times we were borderline obsessed. Case in point, we have three versions of Ticket to Ride (the United States, Europe, and China).  

In recent years, Annie has been so busy with school, band, church, camp, and other activities, that our game nights have been few and far between. We were just too busy to play games. Then the pandemic came. 

Now, without anywhere to go, game night is back – with a vengeance. Here are some of our favorite games…

10. Clue: A few years ago the geniuses at Milton Bradley decided to issue deluxe editions of their classic board games. These games feature old school designs and come in sturdy wooden boxes that can be stored vertically like books on a shelf. I grew up in a family of four children and we were always playing games with other families and their kids. No matter how neat the playroom was when we started, it would be a disaster by the time we were done. The cardboard boxes the games came in would get stepped on and break, pieces would go missing, the dice would disappear, etc. So it’s very satisfying to set-up a game when you know that none of the pieces are missing. Clue isn’t the most challenging, game, but who doesn’t like saying, “Professor Plum, with a candlestick, in the library”? 

9. Bears vs. Babies: I’m not terribly fond of this game but the team created Exploding Kittens (more on that in a bit) made it. Bears vs. Babies is a card game that involves creating weird monsters out of cards. I’m not that into it, but it came with an adults-only card pack we haven’t opened so maybe we’ll give that a whirl. 

8. Stratego: Basically chess for dummies. A fun two-person game where the goal is to not outsmart yourself, which is easier said than done. There’s always an “Oh shit” moment when you realize the piece you need is buried deep in your ranks. There’s a lot of luck involved in this game, but like Battleship and sports betting, you feel like a genius when you win. 

7. Risk: There was a time when I loved this game, but I think that time is in the distant past. We ordered the 60th anniversary edition of “the game of strategy and conquest” a few weeks ago and have played it twice. The first time we misread some of the rules and the game dragged on for like three hours and ended in a draw. The second time I dominated. I conquered Russia on my first turn, and Europe on my second, achieving what many men/sociopaths have dreamt of for thousands of years. After that, victory was a foregone conclusion but the game still dragged on and on, which wasn’t very much fun for the losers. Sorry, losers. (Narrator: He wasn’t sorry.) 

6. Pandemic: This is a collaborative game, meaning the players work together to prevent a pandemic. I’m not terribly into collaborative games. I don’t want to win so much as I want to crush my opponents, set fire to their homes, drink from their skulls, etc. But this was the first game we played together after the stay-at-home order and we really, really wanted to beat the pandemic, and we did. 

5. Yahtzee: I have always loved Yahtzee, especially Triple Yahtzee. Yahtzee is like bowling: you may be competing against each other but everyone loves a good roll. (Pro tip: the 35-point bonus for getting 63 or over in the top tier is the key to victory.) The last time we played we found some of our old score cards and I’m just going to leave this one from 2009 here…

4. Ticket to Ride: This is basically Monopoly with trains only simpler and more satisfying. The idea is to build railroad lines between various destinations of varying lengths. But when your opponents build their lines in your path the routes can get pretty circuitous. Our family was extremely obsessed with this game for a while. We took it with us to coffee shops, family gatherings, basically everywhere. I made the mistake of downloading the game to my phone where the pace of the game is so much faster that it made playing the board game feel tedious. I’m happy to say that after putting Ticket to Ride on the shelf for a while we’re all enjoying it again. 

3. Citadel: Our friend Jeremy introduced us to this game and I always think of him when we play it. It’s got the flavor of Settlers of Catan in that it’s set in an ancient world but even though it strictly a card game it’s much more complex. You acquire cards that help you build your citadel, but you take on a different character with different attributes every turn. It’s a strategy game that requires you to think on your feet and adjust on the fly, but it’s no so complex that you can’t win the first time you play, especially in a large group. It’s also exceptionally cutthroat because of the function of some of the characters you inhabit is to screw others over (thieves, assassins, clerics). You can play this game with a large group and like Exploding Kittens it’s portable and you can take it with you on your travels. (Remember travel?) 

2. Exploding Kittens: The creators of The Oatmeal launched this card game on Kickstarter and for a few years it was their most successful crowd-funding venture ever. As the name suggests, Exploding Kittens is an outrageously irreverent game. The point of the game is to not get blown up by an exploding kitten. Naturally, the best way to do this is to do everything in your power to make sure your opponents get blown up by an exploding kitten. That’s the game. It’s easy to play but requires a separate strategy for ending the game. Best of all, it only takes two minutes to learn and about 15 minutes to play.

1. Settlers of Catan: Only the greatest board game ever invented. The idea is to build, not conquer so it’s more in keeping with 21st century values, and you can trade resources with your opponents so there’s a collaborative element. It’s a classic combination board and card game, but the genius of Catan is that you can stockpile resources with each role of the dice so it’s never boring and you’re never sitting around waiting for your turn. Also, there are numerous ways to win. No single strategy will work every time. Because the “board” is made up of a series of interchangeable hexagon tiles it’s a different game every time you play. Catan is an extremely well designed game that we never tire of playing. 

I’m grateful for these games because of the way they bring us together. They occupy our brains and present problems that we either solve or we don’t, but the stakes are low. No one dies if we don’t build enough settlements or if a kitten explodes in our face or we collectively fail to prevent a pandemic. We laugh and curse and taunt each other. We experience a whole range of emotions that have nothing to do with the awful news of the day or the unwavering uncertainty that govern our lives. Each roll of the dice is a reminder that we live in a universe ruled by chance, but the good will of those gathered around the table make it tolerable. A board game is like a social contract. It only works if everyone agrees to play by the rules. There’s something comforting about that right now. 

Game of Books

Did you know May is Short Story Month? I used initial caps so it must be a thing. I don’t know how long I’ve known this, but long enough to think “This May I’ll read a bunch of short stories” and then never do. 

Well, this year I’m doing it. I’m reading six short story collections—three by men, three by women. Some I’ve been meaning to read for years, others are relatively new. One is for an assignment and another has an interesting title that caught my eye. Some are writers I’ve read before and some are not. And one collection I took all the way to Ireland last August and read a total of one story. 

The books sit in a pile arranged by size. When it’s time to read a new story I roll a six-sided die and the outcome determines which collection I pick up. Some of the books I’m breezing through while others rarely have their number come up. It’s been an enjoyable experience so far and I’ll keep you posted on my progress. 

Do What You Want in the News

Last week Do What You Want was picked as one of Publisher’s Weekly’s 2020 Summer Reads. It’s in the Top Ten category and the accompanying review is fantastic:

“Sweat and sun are two things I associate with summer, but they’re also two things I associate with hardcore punk and Southern California, which make this biography of one of the region and genre’s most influential and important bands an epic read for the summer. It describes the prolific band’s career trajectory and discography along with their worldview, and lays out why they’re not only in the conversation for best punk band of all time, but why they deserve to be listed among the most important artists and philosophers of the past half-century.” —Seth Dellon, director of strategic development

I couldn’t be more thrilled about this (thank you Seth Dellon) but not for the reasons you might expect. 

Lists of books are great fun to read – unless you have a book out that season, in which case they’re trite, tortuous, inconsequential fluff that do more harm than good to literary discourse. 

I’m exaggerating a little, but not much. It’s no fun going through a list, hoping to see your book, but knowing you probably won’t because if you were on the list wouldn’t someone have told you by now? So why bother reading the list, why bother being on the Internet, why bother writing a book when it’s going to be treated like a digital trinket to generate ad revenue for people who don’t know if they’re going to have a job tomorrow?

Whoa, that got dark. 

My point is Do What You Want is on a list, and I no longer have to care about making another. 

I’ll never forget a conversation I had with Jay Bentley. He told me that very early in the Bad Religion’s career when they started getting a lot of fan mail he realized he needed to divorce himself from the opinions of others—good, bad, or indifferent. At first, I thought this was lip service (this was before I realized that Jay may, in fact, be incapable of giving lip service). I probably reacted the way I do when a writer tells me they don’t read their reviews. Sure you don’t… 

But Jay is genuinely indifferent to what people say about his band. All he cares about is the part he can control, which is his performance during the show, and when things go wrong that shouldn’t, it pisses him off. But a negative review in a magazine? A shitty comment on a website? Those thing don’t bother him in the slightest. He’s grateful that people go to the trouble to formulate an opinion but he’s utterly indifferent as to what that opinion might be. 

That strikes me as a very good way to live as a creative person in the eyeball economy. I’d like to get that level someday, but I’m not there yet. 

1000 Memories with Carrie Hudson

This week’s interview features my friend Carrie Anne Hudson, a San Diego artist with a passion for live music. The first Bad Religion gig I went to as the band’s biographer was on March 17, 2017, at the House of Blues in San Diego. Carrie saw that I had posted photos from the gig and immediately reached out to me to share her enthusiasm. She figured out I was writing a book with the band long before the news was announced.   

Carrie is also a phenomenal artist whose work is like a cross between Edward Gorey and Raymond Pettibon. She has prints of her work, a few originals, and other merchandise for sale on her website, which I encourage you to check out. (Carrie is routinely invited to group shows, most of which were cancelled or put on hold due to COVID-19.)

Carrie was one of the first people I interviewed for this project and her answers didn’t disappoint. 

JIM RULAND: What is your favorite Bad Religion song and/or album?

CARRIE ANNE HUDSON: I have loads of favorite songs from them so it's really hard to narrow down. However, I think one of my leading favorites is “Dearly Beloved,” with favorite album being Stranger Than Fiction. 

JIM RULAND: "Dearly Beloved" is from New Maps of Hell, which came out in 2007. What about this song moves you?

CARRIE ANNE HUDSON: Also a great album! 2007 was a great year for music. Firstly, you could say that it's catchy as hell. Secondly, I really enjoy the heaviness of the song. “I can't relate to you” taps into an “abandon all hope ye who enter here” mindset. I was a baby in college when this song came out, navigating through my own existentialism, opinions on religion, government, and so forth. As with many Bad Religion songs, I consistently found “Dearly Beloved” as a background track in my day-to-day life. The song now holds a lot of nostalgia for me.

JIM RULAND: Was this your first exposure to Bad Religion? Your gateway album so to speak? 

CARRIE ANNE HUDSON: Growing up in San Diego, I religiously listened to all the local alternative radio stations, like 91X. I would probably hear "Sorrow" at least 10 times a day when that song came out. The Process of Belief was definitely my introduction to all things Bad Religion.